Four great funeral piles were erected for the men of Latin race, the
Samnites, Etruscans, Campanians, and Bruttians.
The Greeks dug pits with the points of their swords. The Spartans
removed their red cloaks and wrapped them round the dead; the Athenians
laid them out with their faces towards the rising sun; the Cantabrians
buried them beneath a heap of pebbles; the Nasamonians bent them double
with ox-leather thongs, and the Garamantians went and interred them on
the shore so that they might be perpetually washed by the waves. But the
Latins were grieved that they could not collect the ashes in urns; the
Nomads regretted the heat of the sands in which bodies were mummified,
and the Celts, the three rude stones beneath a rainy sky at the end of
an islet-covered gulf.
Vociferations arose, followed by the lengthened silence. This was to
oblige the souls to return. Then the shouting was resumed persistently
at regular intervals.
They made excuses to the dead for their inability to honour them as the
rites prescribed: for, owing to this deprivation, they would pass for
infinite periods through all kinds of chances and metamorphoses; they
questioned them and asked them what they desired; others loaded them
with abuse for having allowed themselves to be conquered.
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